Mangled Beyond Recognition
by TheCartoonusMaximus
Summary: "I... I don't like children. But I know what it's like to be abused, to be treated so badly and to have your life taken from you. And I felt a new emotion: sympathy."


**And now I'm writing fanfics about killer robots, apparently. Somebody stop me, I'm in too deep.**

 **Anyway, this story is about Mangle because I think he's pretty interesting. It also features cameos/references to the phone guy, purple guy, the dead children, the Puppet, and Jeremy. I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think in the review box below.**

* * *

 **"Mangled Beyond Recognition" 5/18/2015**

The creator called me 'Toy Foxy.' Decked me out in pirate gear, put a parrot on my shoulder, and programmed my voice box with traditional swashbuckler songs. I was meant to be set up in Pirate's Cove, like the Foxy before me was, to entertain the children with the stories of old, tales of sea storms and sunken treasure for the patrons to enjoy.

But I had no sooner been set up than the patrons began to complain. I was a pirate, and I was happy being so, but the parents didn't like it.

"Pirates are bad!" the parents complained, dragging their children away. "Are you trying to set a bad example for the children? I'm never bringing my child here again! I want to speak to the manager!"

And so I was changed. They made me look pretty, repainted me to be white and pink and giving me rosy cheeks and full lips and long eyelashes. My parrot was turned into a pet parakeet, and my voice box was recorded over. They said I was no longer a pirate, but an 'acrobat' instead.

I had been one character, the one who I was meant to be, and now they forced me to be another.

I couldn't. I didn't know how. The first day I put on a show for the children, my voice box failed, my sounds coming out as a garbled mess of my new "happy voice" and my original sailor songs.

The children laughed. The parents complained. The employees tried to placate the parents, occasionally looking at me. As if I could have caused this. As if I had chosen to sound like this.

I couldn't help myself, and I pulled the curtains closed, hiding behind them. I was shaking, my pieces that had been badly replaced clinking together. An emotion outside of my programming was coursing through my circuits. I collapsed to the ground, some pieces breaking off as I pulled myself into a ball, wanting nothing more than to hide.

"What's wrong, Foxy?" a voice asked, causing me to look up.

It was an employee, the one who answers the phone when people call in to make party reservations and to order food beforehand. He looked concerned. He smiled at me after a minute, his face so friendly it made some of my unknown emotions go away.

"Don't worry, Foxy," he told me, sitting down behind the curtain beside me and handing me a part that had fallen off. "They just need to warm up to you. Before too long, I bet they love you just as much as I do!"

The phone guy helped me put my parts back into place. He was very kind. I could see why the other animatronics liked him. He didn't treat us like robots, the way others did. Instead, he treated us like people, acknowledging that we were sentient and treating us as such.

The manager stuck his head through the curtains after a moment, yelling at the phone guy. "Scott! Get back to your station! I don't pay you play with the toys, you know!"

The phone guy frowned, but called out his affirmation and left, and then I was alone.

* * *

The next day saw another crowd of children and their parents. It was raining outside and the children were full of energy and needed a way to amuse themselves, and their parents weren't paying enough attention to what the children were doing.

I was ordered to take the stage and no sooner had I done so than there were children crawling on me. I wasn't strong enough to hold them, since I had been so hurriedly rebuilt, and pieces of me began to break off again.

The children thought this was funny, I guess. They started laughing and then there were more of them climbing on me, intentionally trying to tear me apart.

It... hurt. And no one stopped it.

The employees put me back together again later, but the damage had already been done. Tearing me apart had clearly been fun, and, in the days that followed, the children didn't stop. Soon the manager put up a sign announcing that I was now an "interactive, take-apart toy!" I quickly learned that those words meant it was okay to tear me apart.

The employees put me back together every night, and they struggled with it more and more every week. Soon there were pieces missing, and other pieces that were so bent out of shape they wouldn't connect to me anymore. After a few months, the employees gave up and didn't bother to even try putting me back together anymore. They stopped calling me "Foxy" and started calling me "the Mangle" because of my mangled, twisted form.

And so this became my life. Unloved, abused, and broken beyond repair.

And those emotions came back, and they hurt inside me. They made me feel ill and made me lash out whenever I was allowed to move on my own.

And so it went, day after day, as I fell deeper and deeper into despair.

* * *

Crying? I could hear children crying? And screaming?

It was the middle of the night. There were no children in the building. Why was I hearing these sounds?

Curiously, I went to investigate the strange sounds.

There was... blood? … on the floor. And there were children laying on the floor here and there, not moving. Not breathing. Four of them in all. I continued to follow the sounds, not hearing both a child and an adult.

I finally found them. A man wearing the purple uniform of the employees and wielding a knife that was covered in blood. He had a sobbing child pinned to the floor beneath him, begging for release.

I... I don't like children. But I know what it's like to be abused, to be treated so badly and to have your life taken from you. And I felt a new emotion: sympathy.

I growled, lunging at the man in purple, snapping my metal jaws and snarling at him. He attacked me, shoving his knife into my eye, but I didn't care. I could still see well enough, and I could still locate his jugular.

He got away, fleeing from me, and I turned to look at the child on the floor. The little one stared up at me, broken and bleeding, and his eyes held something in them other than contempt for me.

The child was broken, had been jumped and torn apart. This... this was something I understood.

I coiled around the child protectively, wishing more than anything that I could put him back together. I held him and nuzzled him as he continued to sob, whispering things in his small, broken voice.

The light left the child's eyes after awhile, but I didn't leave his side. Not until the Marrionette came, carrying a spare Foxy head. That was the last I saw of the child, the one child who I had ever truly cared about.

* * *

That was awhile back. Now I terrorize the nighttime security guards, doing my best to warn them away from this hellhole that I am trapped in and hoping that one of them in the purple one that I'm after.

Someday he'll return. And, like the children who now inhabit the other animatronics, I'll be waiting for him.

I know you're very curious about us and what goes on in this restaurant, Jeremy Fitzgerald. That's why I've told you my story...

… And why I'm telling you now that you must leave before we kill you.


End file.
